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Balancing Inclusion And “Enlightened Understanding” In Designing Online Civic Participation Systems: Experiences From Regulation Room, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart, Josiah Heidt, Jackeline Solivan
Balancing Inclusion And “Enlightened Understanding” In Designing Online Civic Participation Systems: Experiences From Regulation Room, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart, Josiah Heidt, Jackeline Solivan
Cynthia R. Farina
New forms of online citizen participation in government decision making have been fostered in the United States (U.S.) under the Obama Administration. Use of Web information technologies have been encouraged in an effort to create more back-and-forth communication between citizens and their government. These “Civic Participation 2.0” attempts to open the government up to broader public participation are based on three pillars of open government—transparency, participation, and collaboration. Thus far, the Administration has modeled Civic Participation 2.0 almost exclusively on the Web 2.0 ethos, in which users are enabled to shape the discussion and encouraged to assess the value of …
Better Inputs For Better Outcomes: Using The Interface To Improve E-Rulemaking, Cynthia Farina, Claire Cardie, Thomas Bruce, Erica Wagner
Better Inputs For Better Outcomes: Using The Interface To Improve E-Rulemaking, Cynthia Farina, Claire Cardie, Thomas Bruce, Erica Wagner
Cynthia R. Farina
We believe that e-rulemaking does indeed have potential to increase both the transparency of, and participation in, regulatory policymaking. We argue in this paper that this potential can be realized only if the public interface at www.regulations.gov is substantially redesigned.
Regulationroom: Field-Testing An Online Public Participation Platform During Usa Agency Rulemakings, Cynthia R. Farina, Josiah Heidt, Mary J. Newhart, Joan-Josep Vallbé
Regulationroom: Field-Testing An Online Public Participation Platform During Usa Agency Rulemakings, Cynthia R. Farina, Josiah Heidt, Mary J. Newhart, Joan-Josep Vallbé
Cynthia R. Farina
Rulemaking is one of the U.S. government's most important policymaking methods. Although broad transparency and participation rights are part of its legal structure, significant barriers prevent effective engagement by many groups of interested citizens. RegulationRoom, an experimental open-government partnership between academic researchers and government agencies, is a socio-technical participation system that uses multiple methods to alert and effectively engage new voices in rulemaking. Initial results give cause for optimism but also caution that successful use of new technologies to increase participation in complex government policy decisions is more difficult and resource-intensive than many proponents expect.
Rulemaking 2.0: Understanding And Getting Better Public Participation, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart
Rulemaking 2.0: Understanding And Getting Better Public Participation, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart
Cynthia R. Farina
More than a decade after the launch of Regulations.gov, the government-wide federal online rulemaking portal, and nearly four years since the Obama Administration directed agencies to use “innovative tools and practices that create new and easier methods for public engagement,” there are still more questions than answers about what value social media and other Web 2 .0 technologies can bring to rulemaking–and about how agencies can realize that value. This report, commissioned by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, begins to provide those answers. Drawing on insights from a number of disciplines and on three years of actual …
Using Natural Language Processing To Improve Erulemaking [Project Highlight], Claire Cardie, Cynthia R. Farina, Thomas R. Bruce
Using Natural Language Processing To Improve Erulemaking [Project Highlight], Claire Cardie, Cynthia R. Farina, Thomas R. Bruce
Cynthia R. Farina
This paper describes in brief Cornell’s interdisciplinary eRulemaking project that was recently funded (December, 2005) by the National Science Foundation.
The Value Of Words: Narrative As Evidence In Policymaking, Dmitry Epstein, Josiah Heidt, Cynthia Farina
The Value Of Words: Narrative As Evidence In Policymaking, Dmitry Epstein, Josiah Heidt, Cynthia Farina
Cynthia R. Farina
Policymakers today rely primarily on statistical, financial, and other forms of technical data as their basis for decision-making. Yet, there is a potentially underestimated value in substantive reflections of the members of the public who will be affected by a particular piece of regulation. We discuss the value of narratives as input in the policy making process, based on our experience with Regulation Room–a product of an interdisciplinary initiative using innovative web technologies in real-time online experimentation. We describe professional policymakers and professional commenters as a community of practice that has limited shared repertoire with the lay members of the …